Bologna: Red, Fat, and Confused

“Harris, you’re crushing her. Look! She can barely breathe.”

It’s Day One in pasta school and this is my instructor, Stefania, admonishing me. And she’s right, I am indeed pulverizing the poor sfoglia in front of me — the mixture of flour and eggs that will soon, hopefully, become pasta.

We’re at La Vecchia Scuola Bolognese in Bologna, a well-known pasta school in Italy. I came by recommendation of a friend of a friend, a chef in Portland. Stefania’s the instructor as well as the daughter of Alessandra Spisni, the now-famous pasta maestra who mentored Evan Funke, one of the best pasta chefs in America.

Along with me are six other people — one older Japanese man (who, to my delight, gave Alessandra a formal bow when entering the kitchen), a young Italian man, a British chef, an American who’s quite knowledgeable in the kitchen, and two older Italian women. We are all learning sfoglia, the term for this type of pasta dough. And I am, by far, the worst in the class.

Sfoglia, according to Stefania, is a living thing. The dough is alive. Each one is different, depending on the ingredients, the table, who’s making it, even the air in which it’s being conceived. So with that, you must be intensely intimate with your sfoglia. You must talk to her. And this conversation, as does all communication in Italy, happens through the hands.

With our touch, we detect what the sfoglia needs in each moment. “Listen to her,” says Stefania. “Does she need more flour? Does she need to stretch? To sit? To dry? Remember, she wants to grow, so let her.” At one point, Stefania begins rescucitating someone’s dough — before kneading, she gently puts her hands on it, looks up clairvoyantly into empty space, feels for what the dough needs, then gets to work. As I’m kneading mine, lots of flour is flaking off. I start to reincorporate it but Stefania stops me. “She doesn’t want it,” Stefania says. “If she did, she’d take it in.” And so, I let it be.

There’s a posture to pasta-making: Feet hip-width apart. Spine straight. Shoulders up. The movement actually originates in the upper back. Your arms move similar to wheel rods on a train — up and over, up and over, up and over. Smooth, gentle, consistent. With this, the sfoglia responds. She gets soft, elastic, expansive. She blushes, turning a deep saffron. She starts to form little air bubbles, indicating happiness. Gradually, and with great patience, she makes her transition — from blustery dough to full-blown adulthood.

My sfoglia, however, isn’t going anywhere. While others are soft, puffy, and round, mine is cracked, sticky, and dry. Sfoglia is made with delicate touch, and I am manhandling her. My movements are rough. I am completely in my head, not paying any attention to her. It feels like I am a 16-year-old boy in bed with a woman for the first time — thrusting, pushing, flailing, trying so hard to “get it right," while she’s bored on her back, grimacing, checking her watch and wondering when for the love of God will this just be over.

Eventually though, with the grace of Stefania, my sfoglia rounds into form. She even has little bubbles inside. She’s turned out all right. We roll her out into a thin elegant sheet and set her out to dry. As we wait, we make the stuffing for tortellini.

Bologna’s nickname is “red, fat, and learned.” That’s in reference to the luscious red ragu, the fatty essence of its cuisine, and the prestigious university. Bologna’s home to a school that’s over 1000 years old. It attracts students from all over the world, as it offers nearly every type of program.

That lends itself to a very scholarly vibe around the city. Many roads are lined with porticos — ancient archways with colorful, marble-tiled floors and frescoes both above you and on the walls. It feels like you’re walking through a palace, or an art museum. Large stone towers, ornate fountains, intricate statues. Tiny twisty offshoot roads where bars spill out onto the streets, as people drink their aperitivos and cappuccinos and just sit and smoke and hang. The sidewalks and storefronts are immaculate. Bookstores are on every corner. Even the graffiti is poetic. The people are young, intellectual, politically active. The city just feels smart.

From Bologna we’ve seen the following exports: Parmesan cheese, mortadella (later adapted into “baloney”), ragu, lasagne, tortellini (for which, there’s an ongoing and heated dispute between whether it was first invented on this or that side of the Emilia-Romagna border), tortelloni (not the same thing), as well as the Ferrari, the Ducati, the Lamborghini, and many more. “Sauces and motors,” my Bolognese friend told me, “that’s what we’re known for.”

For the tortellini — the small, stuffed, ring-shaped pastas — we’ll be using Stefania’s family’s recipe. I ask her what goes into it. Turns out it’s always different, depending on who’s making it. Italian cuisine not only ranges from region to region, but from family to family. Stefania’s tortellini recipe came from her mom, which came from her mom, and her mom, and so on. This goes on and on for about 400 years, maybe more. No joke. And that recipe has not strayed one bit since its inception.

That’s because Italian cuisine has rules. Strict rules. It’s perhaps my favorite thing thus far about the culture. For example, as I said, Bologna is the town of tortellini. They are delicious. Yet you must never, ever put them in ragu, or any type of sauce other than broth. Tortellini goes in broth, just like a foot goes into a shoe. There is no other way.

Some other rules:

-No pineapple on pizza, ever. This is a go-to American stereotype I hear from most Italians and to them, there is no greater sacrilege. It is disgraceful, irresponsible, and simply inconceivable.

-No leftover pizza. “This is my idea of hell,” an Italian friend said. Pizza must be eaten fresh, that moment, never after. There are some Italians actually, especially from the south, who will only eat mozzarella the very day it’s produced; after that, it’s just not worth it.

-No chicken with pasta. I brought this up with two older Italian people. I said, “In America, we don’t have a structured, sequenced meal like you do here. We usually put it all together in one dish. So we’ll eat like, fettuccine in alfredo with chicken.” They gave me a look that went from bewilderment to downright disgust to shameful remorse, as if to plead, Why would you do such a thing?

I was out one night and talking with some girls from the area. I asked, “What happens if you had a daughter, and let’s say she had a flair for the unconventional — like she came home one day and said, ‘Hey, I’m gonna make tortellini like this, instead.’ What would you say?” The girl was flummoxed. “This wouldn’t happen,” she said emphatically. “My daughter would never even be exposed to this idea, so it would be impossible for her to even think it up.”

Tradition in food seems to run so deep that, rumor has it, within Bologna’s Chamber of Commerce contains the official recipe for tortellini in broth — signed, sealed, and framed.

Why is food taken this seriously? Like, I know it’s important, but why to this extent?

“We don’t eat to just survive,” says Stefania. “We eat for pleasure. Look what food can do. It can create feeling, sensation, joy. And it’s best when prepared certain ways. So why not make it the best it can possibly be?”

We finish the tortellini, and by the end of class, I’ve kind of sort of got the hang of pasta. I was still sorely behind the others, but eventually my tortellini and my tagliatelle turned out okay.

When you master pasta, or sfoglia, you are known by the teachers as a “sfoglino.” This is as pure a designation as a monk, or a Jedi. They are so proud of their sfoglini, as I’m guessing that it’s no easy task to become one.

“Being a sfoglino is not just about making pasta,” says Stefania. “It’s how you move through life. You’re strong, yet tender. Decisive, but gentle. You live fluidly, and you do everything with love.”

It’s Stefania’s very Aristotelian view: That how one makes pasta is how one makes everything.

Once the lesson is completed, we get to eat what we’ve made. The tortellini in broth, Stefania’s sacred recipe, was and continues to be one of my favorite pasta dishes I’ve ever had. The filling, which was about the size of a tiny gumball, contained such rich, layered flavors — a mix of beef, nutmeg, mortadella and others I admittedly can’t remember — that every single bite was an explosion of joy. We drank wine, then ate the tortelloni in butter, and finally the tagliatelle in ragu. It was a pasta feast, and like the tortelloni, I was stuffed. Appropriately, I went home to take a nap. Unlike a sfoglino, there was nothing gentle about it.

A few days later, something came up.

I don’t know exactly where it came from, but it was there. Something was agitated.

My second to last day, I met a woman for coffee. Her name was Blythe. She’s from New York originally but has been in Bologna for about five months. Her husband was transferred for work — he’s an expert on super computers. Apparently Italy had just bought one but didn’t know how to use it, so they brought in Blythe’s husband to come and show them the ropes. And with that, Blythe closed her career, packed everything up and moved with him.

Blythe’s in her 40s. She was a dance professor in New Mexico before moving. Now, she’s looking for her next step. She loves Bologna, she says, because the people here are very real. Already, she has made true, genuine friends — quicker than anywhere else she’s lived. “When you meet with people, and I don’t know if this is an affect of being isolated for so long from the pandemic, but they really bring you in,” she says. “There’s nothing superficial about it. You talk about real stuff. It’s just such an incredible connection.”

I’m not surprised to hear this, though, because it’s exactly what Blythe exudes. When you talk, she listens intensely. It’s almost intimidating at first, because you know your words are being thoroughly digested. But as I told her, it feels wonderful. When someone gives their attention like this, it demands authenticity. This is a rare yet delightful quality in conversation because when it’s present, the truth comes out, fast. And that’s what happens.

We’re about twenty minutes into meeting each other, just a few sips into our cappuccinos, before I start dishing like it’s a therapy session.

“I’d been looking forward to this trip for years, but now that I’m here, something feels off,” I said. “I can’t put my finger on it.”

“Originally, this was supposed to be a vision quest,” I told her. “This all started a few years ago, but really kicked into gear late 2020. I was on the verge of quitting my job, and mentally I was just all over the place. I didn’t have a true compass or sense of direction. I was visiting family and having a walk with my sister, who said, ‘I think you need to go to Europe and just get lost.’ And that immediately clicked,” I said. “That’s what I wanted this trip to be.”

I told her about some writing from Joseph Campbell. He talks about wandering. Wandering is what you do when you’re lost, or don’t know what to do. You carry no plans or expectations. You do only what calls to you that day, that moment. And when you do it, every person in your day becomes a plot point, or a character. They are the ones who guide you to what’s next.

“I feel like I have this golden opportunity for adventure and self-discovery, but it’s not happening; or that I’m meant to be elsewhere,” I said. “Like, maybe I wanted this for so many years, but I missed the moment to do it.”

“I don’t know if I’m too comfortable, or what,” I said. “Part of me wants to ship my suitcase home, pack a backpack, buy a ticket to Barcelona, and just go from there.”

“Do it,” Blythe said, without any hesitation. “If you have that itch, then do it. You might love it. Or you might arrive and feel totally weird and out of place. Maybe you’ll stay for three days and say ‘Well, that was weird,’ and then come back. But it’s always better to do it than to sit and think about it for weeks and weeks.”

“Look, I’m going through the same thing,” she continued. “I’m not really sure what my next step will be, just that I like being here. But it does bother me. And a friend gave me good advice, that I’m now going to give to you: What does Italy want for you? Let this trip be what it wants to be—not what you want it to be.”

I took a sigh of relief. Simple enough. Yet that lasted about three seconds before my mind kicked into gear. “Wait, but what’s that mean?” I asked. “Should I buy that ticket to Barcelona? Do I stay here? I already have my next stop planned to go to Carpi tomorrow—” I stopped myself. “What do you think I should do?”

“Right now, you’re doing something I’ve done: We get in our heads about what to do next, and then we miss the moment,” Blythe said. “Just be here. Enjoy your last day. You’ve got this plan to go to Carpi tomorrow to meet this other person. That’s what’s next, and who knows what’ll come up. Go there, have fun, sleep on it, and see how you feel.”

The next day, I took a train an hour north to meet Chiara.

We met through Couchsurfing. She saw I was in Bologna and offered to host me. Chiara’s in her late 40s and lives in Carpi — not Capri (one traveler apparently booked a night with her thinking it was Capri), a tiny village outside Bologna that gets zero English-speaking tourists. Chiara’s a very interesting person. She eats once per day, lunch. For years, she backpacked through Europe and Asia, often sleeping in parks or train stations. From then on, she’s renounced possessions.

This is evident in her apartment. There’s one hallway, four rooms, and a bathroom. Two rooms were locked for renovations; leaving mine and hers. In my room are two water bottles, a mattress on the floor, and a chair. Chiara was very emphatic before I arrived that the situation was pretty bare bones, and I didn’t mind. Actually, I found the simplicity to be soothing.

That night, Chiara played travel therapist. I told her about my angst and discontent. She loved the idea of me sending all my things back home, though I think she supports any attitude that involves “reduction.” Finally, we arrived at a conclusion.

“If you want my advice? Just do what’s next,” she said. "If the next thing doesn’t excite you, or it starts to become boring or meaningless, then go do something else instead. Don’t be afraid to change your plans. Sometimes it’s good to improvise. Like, okay, it’s not what you thought it’d be. You can change!”

“Also, you are traveling for a long time. You’re not used to this,” she added. “You’ll have days where you feel lost, or bored. It’s okay. Just remember what you like, and stick to that.”

That night, I had a very vivid dream. I was in Switzerland and moving belongings from my car to an apartment. I came out to get my things and found my laptop and hard drive both smashed to bits on the pavement. When I woke up in the morning, the message seemed clear: Start over.

I didn’t know exactly what that meant in practical terms, but I felt a sense of lightness and clarity. I was ready to do whatever came next—whether that was shipping my bag back home, buying a ticket for Spain, or ditching any pre-conceived plans. I’d follow whatever I felt called to do, without any restrictions or inhibitions.

And today, for this moment, that calling was unmistakable: Go to Naples.